life has finally slowed down this week, and i am pouring myself into taking delicious bites of our home life.

which never fails to include stopping to watch her every move and drinking her laineyloveness in.

her (late) eighteen month appointment today has her…perfect & healthy. i am always nostalgic and thankful and this big ball of emotions after her appointments. one being that this is the same office i’ve walked into so many times with a newborn, a baby, a toddler…and it’s like walking into the hallways of your old elementary school every time. i love her doctor, i love mary who works the desk, i love the nurse…and i love that these people were with us during some very scary days. and then, every time, as i leave her check-ups, i think about every baby in this world without the good fortune of health…and how different their lives are…and how scared their parents must feel. and how deeply grateful i am for everything about her life and the fact that we live, we love, we climb, we play, we hear and see and feel everything there is to feel in this world without limitations. big thankful sigh.

and speaking of big ball of emotions, that’s what i am right now, and it’s this giant conglomerate of about a million things. leaving my family after an incredible weekend…the excitement of christmas and traditions we will share in our home next week…and this overwhelming flood of gratitude. because it’s the end of the year in the middle of economic travesty, and we are all okay. we are healthy and happy, and i can’t imagine facing hard times with the added struggles of fear and anxiety towards life itself. and then there’s this giant milestone just weeks away. i will enter a new decade in two weeks, and i’ve just been thinking about how things have played out these last thirty years and how there’s nowhere i’d rather be than right here, right now. all the lemons along the way…old, moldy, sour, rotting lemons…have turned into this ginormous pool of lemonade…shining, sweet lemonade with lemon garnishes and a sugared rim. i want to grab Thirty, slow dance (and/or tango/rhumba/salsa/dirty dance) with it, make out with it and give it the time of its life. and i’m gunna. but that’ll be another post. stay tuned.

so, amid the emotions…we bake. we craft. we crank up the christmas music and make up new dance moves…ones babies can do too (and she can! you should see!). we make memories.
today, we traded an afternoon nap for an apron, a big spoon of peanut butter and a great recipe for muddy buddies.

…enjoying the deliciously grateful things. ~k

i spent the first twenty minutes of our plane ride home last night spinning the playback dial on my camera, reviewing the 757 photos i took on our trip. as we slowly inclined our way high above the clouds and into that safe-to-remove-your-seatbelt zone, i felt my throat constricting tight.

“don’t cry,” i told myself.

“please, not here. not in 22 D.”

but, with each click of the dial, another memory appeared. all 15 megapixels of its perfection. and i could only hope the sun blasting into my tiny porthole of a window glared my face enough to hide my tears.

similar tears were shed almost six years ago when i made the decision to move away from home in search of a job, some independence and “finding myself” apart from my family, the only thing i identified myself with at the time (which, needless to say, played out for the better. hello? brett & lainey? it’s called fate, i think). i remember weighing my heavy list of “cons” (i.e.: paralyzing fear, zero support system, the great unknown…) against the measly “pros” (beach and a job) when my sister, perhaps patronizingly yet successfully offered me a ray of hope.

“just think,” she predicted, “when you come home and walk in the door from now on, it will be just like the movies. we’ll cheer she’s here! and you’ll drop your suitcases in exchange for hugs. and someday…picture visiting for christmas with a family, and we’ll run to greet you and everyone will fight over your babies. and it will feel great–even better than it does now–to be together.”

my sister, the prophet.

there is no adjective to describe this weekend that wouldn’t seem trivial. lowly. cliche. i would try magic, but then again…magic is david copperfield. magic is ronald mcdonald. magic is hype and smoke and illusions. this weekend was anything but. it was real.

part of me wants to go back and rewind–beginning with climbing off the plane and experiencing the love and christmas wonder these last three days granted us all over again. and part of me is just content. content to be home–the comfort of our own beds inside our own happy walls where i’ve decided to build our family. our beaches. our sunny front yard. our messy kitchen. our home.

home with new memories, carefully folded and put away in the drawers of sweet yesterdays.

so, with no further ado…

our weekend, presented in the only form i am emotionally capable of right now…and perhaps, the greatest form of prose known to mankind, or at least to me….The Great Stream of Consciousness…oh, and a few pictures. and by few, i mean i spared you all 757, although the task of choosing which ones to post was like choosing which child you love best or which parent to spend christmas with. just simply not possible.

and warning…bear with my christmas sap–a sort of love child of say, tiny tim & cindy lou hoo.

drumroll please…

i will never forget…

being greeted with a christmas fanfare only my dad could create and feeling, after six years, that yes…this is still home. if there is a real santa, i think my dad might be him. or, at least some kind of decor advisor to the north pole. (are you, dad?)

snow. big, beautiful crystally flakes that, as if cued…began dancing to the ground just a few hours after our arrival.

the breathless excitement i encountered upon viewing my old downtown, completely decorated for christmas. we walked its cold streets, bundled in mittens and hats and lainey tucked away in the sling. we peered in frosty windows at christmas figurines and sparkly ornaments. we landed upon the most charming little toy store i’ve ever laid eyes on. and it felt like christmas.

…and retreating from the cold downtown streets into the warmth of my favorite downtown restaurant where we played musical chairs along our long table, filled with family, talking to as many as we could take in at one time. there were kids on laps and cameras snapping. the kind of laughter that swings your head back and squints up your eyes. warm bread, cold beer, good wine and pasta that would, i’m sure, have you on the grapefruit diet the next day if you knew the fat content. for the record, i never want to know.

and i watched as all these people–my people–took turns playing with my baby.

my neices, my sister, my brother, my mom & dad…scooping up lainey at every opportunity and loving her like she was their own…

at one point, my sister was nuzzling lainey as she slept…her voice trembled and she said, “i hate this. i hate that i don’t know this baby. ”

grandpa pancake breakfast. my great-grandpa’s recipe and he made them on a wood stove. they are thin and chewy and taste amazing with loads of butter and syrup…or, as my grandma used to have them, a spoonful of brown sugar and a puddle of cream.

visiting santa in the most perfect of santa visiting places on earth…a tiny glass dome in the middle of the cold…and only one child enters at a time. i realize this year, the window is slowly closing and next year we will most likey have a full-out screaming/gyrating/tramautized picture…or none at all. but, for now, i’ll take the reaching arms and pained expression.

the fine mess of cousins i got to be with saturday. three of these babies, i rocked to sleep almost as much as their mom. three, i read bedtime books to two nights a week in college, two are half-mine but treated by my family as whole as can be, and one is all, wonderfully, perfectly…mine.

hats and coats and mittens and scarves…i love them. i love the way they look. i love the way they feel. i love the way they surrond every part of you with warmth and comfort…and the way the warm air feels when you finally go inside and pull them all off.

as much as the cold gets to everyone and i hear major complaints about it, and as much as i do love having sunny skies almost every day of the year, let me offer this one grass-is-greener feeling i have on the cold…especially, this time of year. there’s something about being inside when you know it’s freezing outside. homes, stores, restaurants…everything is cozier when you know you’re sheltered from the elements outside.

to sit and sip coffee in the morning all curled up in a cozy chair looking out a frosty window at nothing but tundra? that’s absolutely delicious.

the most wonderful hotel where we ended our weekend. i knew it was good when i walked into the pool room and saw knotty pine everywhere. it was lodgey. it was cozy. and as we simmered in the hot tub in that cozy, lodgey room, the skylights above revealed a cold, snowy night. why, hello there heaven.

oh what a magical (but not in the david copperfield/ronald mcdonald way) night it was. the kids swam.

we simmered.

we played games and opened presents. we sat in the hot tub until midnight and discussed politics and religion and books and love and family and had ideas to change the world. there are no two people i’d rather discuss these issues with than my brother & sister. we get passionately moved. we jump up and say things like “yes! yes! you’re so right!” we respect each other’s differences and embrace our many similarities. we love. yup, we love.

sneaking away from the hotel for just a little bit to escape to a very special place with my sister for some memories.

and tons of crazy fun. dance party in the hotel lobby. living room karaoke. one a.m. slumber party in room 330. i love my family. i love how much fun i have with them. i love who they make me.

…and i love what they bring out of brett and austyn and brandyn and lainey.

…i love that the boys asked “how come we can’t stay longer?” when we left and wanted to go live with my brother. i love that for three days, all we thought about was being together. i loved seeing everyone just completely head-over-heels happy.

so, there’s a sliver of my pictures.

these three days have harvested enough love to last my family-hungry heart through the next famine. and, capturing it in images is like canning the excess–so that when the fields are bare, i can go back and look–pull a jar off the shelf, so to speak, and taste just how good the sweet fruit of family really is.

kissing the universe–the stars, the planets, the galaxies and all the atoms they’re made of.

…enjoying the unspeakable joy things. oh, and the merry, merry christmas things. ~k

despite being wiped out and needing a serious battery jump, i knew it was going to be a good day when the doorbell rang at 8 a.m. and, i opened the door to a stream of sunshine…in more ways than one:

my sweet lily brought me a bagel and some piping hot coffee. (thank you, david!)

and then that goodness just snowballed into this great big ball of i-can’t-wait-till-tomorrow.

i never thought friday would come. i had so much to do this week. but, here it is. my work is done. the house is (semi) clean, the bags are packed and i am almost in tears thinking of the goodness that is to come in these next days.

my family. all together. in the snow.

we are huddling together at my favorite restaurant at a little downtown main street tomorrow night. and we will laugh. and cry. and talk. and love. my mom will pinch the babies’ cheeks and say things like “oh, idn’t she da cutest? you’sh gwamma’s girl, iddensht you?” my neices will pile into my lap and fight for my attention. my brother and brett will laugh and pick up right from where they left off…and there will be hot chocolate and christmas music and laughing. and we will bundle up in the cold and walk downtown peering into christmas displays in windows and thinking that yes…this is a norman rockwell painting…and we are in it.

and then saturday, we all have poolside hotel rooms…side by side. we will stay up far too late. we will catch up. we will ask questions from the “if” book and drink and be merry. my dad will hush all the babies to sleep…because he always does. and my sister and brother and their familes and my family will all be one…and we will have our magic. the magic that comes when we’re all together. it always does.

i’m going to bed happy.

this happy….

thank you, dad, for making this all happen. thank you for including mom. thank you for loving us all so much and creating magic just like when we were little.

…enjoying the christmas things. ~k